FnaticMSI PLAY BEAT IT Launched - over $65k in prizes!

We are more than happy to present to you all a brand new platform for all the future FnaticMSI PLAY tournaments, not only with a new design but new features which will make gamers feel comfortable playing our tournaments. The campaign will kick off with a Call of Duty 4 5on5 tournament, where we will be accepting 64 teams from all over the Europe to battle for a prize purse of $1800.

The series of tournaments will culminate with a Quake Live Duel,and finally a Counter-Strike 1.6 5on5 tournaments, where players and teams will have the chance to qualify for a tournament in Asia with a $45,000 prize purse. Both the CS 1.6 and QL tournament will be divided in two phases; qualification and a finals stage. Qualifying for the LAN event in Beijing means that team's travel costs (flights) will be paid.

Amateur teams and players will have their chance to qualify for the finals and battle invited duellers in the QuakeLive tournament and top European teams in CS 1.6. Besides qualifying for the LAN event in Asia, winners of the Quake Live and CS 1.6 tournament will have their chance to win many other prizes.

The LAN event will take place in Beijing, China, on the 4th of September which wraps up the "BEAT IT" campaign with prizes worthy over $65,000 in total to be handed out. More information about the LAN event will be disclosed shortly. During the span of 2 months, we will try to provide the best possible coverage in cooperation with our coverage partners and present many more give aways and other sorts of contests to our beloved fans and community.

The Call of Duty 4 tournament is scheduled to start on 12th of June at 14:00 CET. We will be accepting 64 teams from all over the Europe with no restrictions on age or nationality. You can notice we have an automatic system for reporting scores, so teams will now manually add and confirm the scores.

-The tournament will include 64 teams-Only teams from Europe are eligible to sign up-The tournament starts at 14:00 CET on 12th of June-The first two rounds will be played on 12th, round of 16, 8 and 4 will take place on 13th of June, starting at 17:00 CET-The finals will be played in best of three fashion on 14th of June, starting at 20:00 CET- SIGN UP!

Please ensure you read the rules in full found when you view the tournament page. If you have any questions then please contact one of our admin team, visit IRC or tweet twitter.com/FnaticMSIPLAY.

BEAT IT Schedule

Game

Dates

Month

Call of Duty 4

12th, 13th, 14th

June

QuakeLive Qualifier #1

19th

June

QuakeLive Qualifier #2

20th

June

QuakeLive Qualifier #3

26th

June

QuakeLive Qualifier #4

27th

June

CS 1.6 Qualifier #1

3rd, 4th

July

CS 1.6 Qualifier #2

10th, 11th

July

QuakeLive Finals

16rd, 17th, 18th

July

CS 1.6 Finals

23rd, 24st, 25th

July

Heroes of Newerth

30th, 31st, 1st

July/August

Simon 'Crofteh' Belfield with the help of Lee 'Dewy' Dewhurst and Rakinur 'rakin'Alam had a chance to speak with Danijel 'StreeT' Remus about the upcoming PLAY events:

Today is the announcement of the 're-invention of FnaticMSI PLAY' with the backing of MSi, can you give us a run down on what exactly PLAY is?

The whole idea of PLAY came after we had already hosted a few huge tournaments. We started with the King of Kings tournaments in Warcraft III and Counter Strike 1.6 aim_map and we actually saw those tournaments went really well and were very well organised. After that, we launched Fnatic Game Idol, of which the purpose was to find a Counter-Strike: Source team. We had sixteen groups, almost every group with six or seven teams and without a single problem we made it work and it was logical for us to think about hosting tournaments more often.

That's how the idea of PLAY was born and then we all worked hard to make a good platform for it and run tournaments on that website instead of fnatic.com. To be honest, I was doing my military service during the summer, so I jumped back on my position when I finished it.

What is your role in FnaticPLAY?

I've been working as head admin and PLAY Assistant Operations Manager since its beginnings. To explain a bit better, I have to take care of the content on the PLAY website and organise it properly and make sure the tournaments run smoothly along with some other tasks. Nothing of this would be possible without hard working and dedicated admins who are the core of everything. We are all very well organised and connected. That's the key to our success, great communication and the will to constantly improve and help eachother in any situation.

Now we know MSI have been the head sponsor of FnaticMSI for a long time now, but you mention a 'revised partnership' with them for PLAY, what does this entail?

Our title sponsor is yet again showing great interest in gaming, but also that they are eager to grow even more, to expand their sights to new horizons, be one step in front of the competition and combined with our knowledge of gaming, running tournaments and the help of our professionals teams it can produce only the best.

Their partnership on the BEAT IT campaign will enable many gamers to take part in high quality tournaments and win great prizes. For Quake Live duelers and Counter-Strike 1.6 teams, it can be a trip to Beijing, so we will definitely make big things happen during the summer.

PLAY has been a successful one-day tournament site prior to this re-invention, what made you want to take it to the next level?

Even before we stepped into this new 'adventure', we were trying to improve the quality of our tournaments. Some of you might remember that we had PLAY shows, for example on Quake Live TV with Cypher and madix playing some show matches, then talking to them about the games and the competitions whilst people were listening.

The point is we are constantly improving and this partnership with MSi on the BEAT IT campaign came as the cherry on top of the cake, but we are not going to stop here, quite the contrary, we will be aiming higher with every tournament we host.

In the press release of the PLAY and MSI partnership it is said that the winners of certain tournaments will be eligable to compete in a tournament in Asia, how did that come about and can you give any more information on that at the moment?

For now, all I can say is that the winners of the Quake Live and Counter-Srike 1.6 tournament will travel to Beijing for an event that will take place on the 4th of September, and that will be our top prize for QL and CS1.6 tournaments.

What are your hopes and aspirations for this upcoming tournament and if it is successful will this become a mainstay in the eSports scene?

I can not speculate about it now. At this current point in time, we will do our best to produce a series of great tournaments, please the gamers across Europe and gather more and more experience after everything we do. After the BEAT IT campaign comes to an end, we will see where we go from there.

Which games can you announce at the moment that you will you be doing tournaments for and do you think you will be able to entice the créme-de-la créme of eSports teams into these tournaments?

Under the BEAT IT campaign we will have Call of Duty 4, Quake Live, Counter-Strike 1.6 and Heroes of Newerth. We are pretty sure our tournaments will attract the best of Europe in all these games. High prizes and the reputation of FnaticMSI PLAY should be enough to get the best to play.

What can we, as fans, expect to see during the run up to the first tournament?

Something that makes PLAY different from any other online tournament site is that we bring in a lot of writing coverage. Pre-tournament interviews, previews of groups, matches, analysis, give aways for our fans and content have been an integral part of almost every tournament we have ran so far. This time, nothing will change except we will have more to offer our fans and extent our coverage thanks to our coverage partners and sponsors.

When will the first tournament be and what game will you be choosing?

The first tournament and the opener of the BEAT IT campaign will be Call of Duty 4 which will feature 64 teams in battle for a $1,800 prize purse.

PLAY is usually known for one-day tournaments, will all the competitions in the PLAY season be one-day tournaments?

No, you will see the COD4 tournament ran across a span of three days. We are not going to make leagues or anything like that, but for high profile tournaments that are upon us, one day is not enough and it is much fairer to the fans if we spread them across a few days.

Insist On The Best

The games for computers are at a higher point than they have ever been with the constant upgrading of computer technology. What can be done with video games is unlike ever before. However this means all those old computers you have sitting around will soon be out of date… MSI is prepared, and is making available a laptop that can replace any desktop PC in power, and will be able to run any game released in this beautiful new decade!

The MSI’s newest GT series laptop the 660 is a gaming oriented laptop that is advertised as being able to replace any desktop PC. The GT 660 contains revolutionary new laptop speaker technology and claims to have worked with the leading sound system design company to bring to you finely tuned enclosed speakers to bring a totally unique sound experience to your laptop.

The laptop is a monster and can handle any modern computer game to date, and will be able to handle what ever those gaming companies throw at it for years to come. The performance of the computer is astoundingly high with a quad core i7 processor. It’s graphic capabilities are equally as high end with a GeForce GTX 285MB graphics card this laptop will be able to handle any game and even high definition movies! Not only will the laptop contain all these powerful processing chips but will be one of the first laptops to feature USB 3.0!The newest and greatest in USB technology allowing for high-speed transfer and communication between any and all peripheral devices you have connected to your laptop.

About MSI

MSI is proud of its more than 20 years experience in designing and manufacturing high performance IT products. The product lines of MSI are motherboards, graphic cards, notebooks, consumer electronics, barebones, networking and server products, and fully integrated add- on peripherals. With its ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 qualified facilities, MSI products provide the ultimate performance, reliability and value- increasing productivity. We distribute our products through offices located in The Netherlands, Serbia, Germany, Italy, Poland, France, Russia,Taiwan, United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, China, Korea, Australia, United Kingdom and India.

MSI markets its products to distributors, computer system manufacturers, and system integrators. For more information visit the company on the World Wide Web at www.msi.eu. Micro-Star International Co., Ltd (MSI) enjoys a high reputation for its innovations in the construction of Motherboards, Graphics Cards, Optical Storage Devices, Workstations, Servers, Slim PCs, Barebone Systems and IA Products.

Since its founding in 1986, MSI has remained at the forefront in providing easy-to-implement, state-of-the-art products and robust computing solutions for our customers.Our efforts are focused on quality, customer satisfaction and innovative solutions to meet growing market demands for computing needs.

For nearly 16 years, MSI has paid close attention to customers' needs and has a proud history of achieving highly satisfaction results. In the process, a unique business culture has emerged that drives associates to perform their absolute best.

Our work is characterized by intellectual curiosity, devotion to customer needs, passion and the demands we place upon ourselves for quality. A global company with sales of $1.7 billion in 2002, MSI serves an international network of distributors and OEM customers in the US , Europe , Asia , Africa , Australia , and Latin America .

MSI was recently ranked number 22 on Legend Magazine's Top 1000 manufacturing companies in Taiwan and ranked number 85 in the recent BusinessWeek Info Tech 100 report, published in June 2003.

For further information about MSI visit their website by clicking HERE.

But doesn't the chinese gevernement bann all Quake-Series games because oft the 2nd Part where the Strogg had a comunism-inspired altitude??? If yes you can't hold a LAN-Tournament in China with Quake Live in it...